Sunday, September 4, 2011

Nothing Bundt Cakes Finalists!

Thank you for all of the great entries into our Nothing Bundt Cakes Contest! Up for grabs is free cake for a year from Nothing Bundt Cakes in Willow Glen. I have managed to narrow it down to the 3 finalists below.

Before announcing a winner, I would love to hear your opinions on which story should win. Chrystal's brussel spout bundt cakes, Jonathan's runaway groom cake, or Diana's puzzle cake? The final decision could be impacted by your comments below!

Here are our three finalists:

Chrystal

I have an unusual daughter. As a 5 year old, she once told me that she was hungry. Could I please make a veggie platter as a snack for her? Now don't get me wrong! Chloe likes sugar with the best of them, and at one point wanted to be a "meat taste tester" when she grows up. (Shall I send the picture of the "steak cake" she wanted for her 10th birthday? It came with "peas" and "mashed potatoes" in the form of jelly beans and ice cream with chocolate sauce, and thanks to strawberry cake, it looked rare when cut into.)

Last year for her 11th birthday, she requested that her cake look like brussel sprouts..... These were made with two mini bundt cakes each, covered in fondant. The use of fondant was a new experience for us.

She is on a roll! For number twelve, she wants a cake that looks like broccoli - ?

Jonathan

The day of the wedding it was snowing. It wasn't just a light sprinkle but rather large fluffy flakes that kept falling. My sister was getting married and in the preceding days I had picked up a number of tasks to help with the wedding. Some of them were rather simple errands like shuttling people around town, or picking up supplies at the store. The deepening snow made this somewhat harder but I pressed on and after the ceremony drove and slipped and slid down to the country club that was the site of the reception.

When I got there and began work on my next job (DJ-ing the wedding) the cake had just arrived. It was carried to the back of the room and sat on its appointed table, bare of any decoration save the frosting. Sitting on the table next to the cake were two plastic figurines of a bride and groom. They stood watch next to the cake examining the empty room, waiting for their turn in the spotlight. Finished with my work at the DJ table I walked over to examine the cake more closely. I was joined by the wedding organizer at the country club who observed that the figurines were not in their rightful place atop the cake. The bride and groom weighed more than they appeared and the groom was especially challenging for the organizer to perch on top the cake as his tiny plastic feet had trouble gripping the frosting. Their trim proportions were misleading

No more than a couple minutes later I heard a loud *THONK* and saw that the groom had made a suicidal dive off the top of the cake, careening off the layers and excavating some of the delicate frosting. His escape had been noticed in time to make adequate repairs to the cake before it was too late. Later it was discovered that the plastic couple had just been intended to stay on the table and do their posing there. The cake remained delicious, flowers and ribbons took their place as the correct finishing touch. But if I was superstitious I would have to say that the groom figurine jumping off the top of the cake has to be one of the worst signs of bad luck possible. Thankfully though, it was just a cake. And we ate it.

Diana

The Puzzle Cake

I once tried to make a cake for my boyfriend many years ago. The plan was to make two, small chocolate cakes, stack them on top of each other with banana custard in the middle, then white frosting with chopped strawberries on top. Sounds easy enough, but to anyone who knows me, this may have been a little too advanced for me. Rumor has it one of my cookies I baked in the past was so hard that the duck I fed it to in the pond sunk to the bottom, never to be heard from again. But I was optimistic that this cake would not suffer the same fate and all my other cooking travesties and that maybe, JUST MAYBE, I would be able to successfully cook something.

My chocolate cake pieces came out ok, but they were sort of lopsided. My pan must have been uneven? Totally the pan's fault, no doubt about it. My custard came out ok, with only a few small patches of dried custard powder but with the icing and cake, I was sure you would barely even notice. So far, the cake was a winner. When you have the cooking experiences I have had, you don't worry whether the result is perfect, only if it can be disguised as perfect.

I iced the cake and was still doing ok, but while I was putting the strawberry chunks on top, a crack formed on the top of my cake. After a few angry insults directed at the cake, I believed I could just "glue" the crack together with frosting. Afterall, frosting is pretty sticky, right? Worse case scenario, I could just fill in the crack with frosting like painters do with Spackle on a wall. In a better mood, I shoved the cake into the fridge and waited for my boyfriend to come over. By the time my boyfriend got there, my cake sabotaged me. The crack came back and had deepened. The custard worked like a slip and slide and an entire chunk fell off my cake and on the fridge shelf.

Completely upset, I tried to pull the cake out of the fridge and put it safely on the counter, but the cake was determined to embarrass me and more chunks fell on the floor. I think a few "lucky" pieces actually got as far as the counter before they too betrayed me. I call it a Puzzle Cake because I hadn't quite given up on it and spent the next few minutes trying to fit the pieces back together, telling my boyfriend, "NO!! IT'S STILL GOOD!! THIS CAN WORK!! I'M STILL GOING TO EAT IT!!" I don't remember if he actually ate any, but the moral of this story is ... just buy a cake. It's easier, less of a mess, and tastes a LOT better. You can always just take the price tag off and claim it as your own. Your boyfriend can't prove it.

9 comments:

I vote for Jonathan's story. The groom may have jumped, but that bride figurine looks to me to have quite an attitude. Perhaps he was pushed! And besides, how often does one hear of a snow-filled wedding day story?

My vote goes to Chrystal. Normal/regular beautiful cakes are a common occurrence. But every once in a while somebody comes along who thinks outside the box. (can we say Rembrandt?)This sounds like a journey toward… What will she create next?Tomato cake, squash cake, bell pepper cake????

As a friend of both Jonathan and Chrystal, it's a hard decision to make! I feel loyalty to both. However, if it's on merits of the cake, I'd say I'd go with Chrystal. She, by way of her off-the-wall kids (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), has made some interesting cake creations over the years. If it's by the merit of the story, I'd say Jonathan's got a great one to tell. I'm just glad I don't have to make the decision.